Saturday, January 23, 2010

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the amount of money that corporations are allowed to spend on candidate elections has created quite some heat. The official ruling can be had here:

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

Basically, this spells out some RADICAL changes in democracy as we know it. Big business will no longer be restrained on how much money they care to throw into the political sphere. If you thought the average person's voice was being drown out already, you are in for a real shock when you see billions of formerly restricted dollars flood the political scene.

Jamie Raskin, an American law professor had the following to say:

"I looked at just one corporation, Exxon-Mobil, which is the biggest corporation in America; and in 2008 they posted profits of 85 billion dollars. If they decided to spend just 10% of their profits in just one year, that is 8.5 billion dollars, that would be three times more than the Obama campaign, the McCain campaign, and every candidate for house and senate in this country spent in 2008. That is just one corporation, so think about the fortune 500."

I don't have to point out that this is harmful to the democratic process, that much is obvious. What I want to know is:

Who in their right mind thought this would a good idea?

Ask your family and friends to summarize their thoughts on the control big business has on our politicians, I bet they will say what my family and friends say; corporations have too much influence on our legislation.